Good morning. Hello. How are you? #989
Break up Amazon, Trump Indictment, bitching about bananas, deleting all my Tweets, Sackler settlement, ranting about Midjourney and ChatGPT
Good morning. Hello. How are you? Happy Tuesday, my least favorite day of the week. It’ll be fine. Because it’s also, yet again, indictment day.
Read the whole thing last night. Stayed up too late waiting for it to drop, then went to bed and read all 96-or-so pages on my highly recommended Kindle Scribe. God I wish Amazon would just break up: AWS, book-and-Kindle business, ad business (now unsupported by an oligopolist), and the rest of the e-commerce business. Probably make em divest the logistics business too. Isn't that indictment coming soon from good ole Lina Khan? Rumors abound that it is imminent. That’ll be a good day too.
But I digress.
Anyway, like I said: read the whole indictment. Was up till midnight. I am tired. But it was worth it. There is not much in there that we didn’t already know. Except this whole completely bonkers subplot where Sydney Powell hires this company — a law firm I think — and they barge their way into a county courthouse and steal a dominion voting machine and a bunch of voting records from the election and then take the thing and tamper with it and steal the data and do all of the things that they accuse other people of doing. It really is pretty insane. They are abetted by a county employee named Misty, which is pretty great. Misty now gets to be on an indictment with the former president of the United States, so good on you, Misty, your name will be remembered.
Trump has to turn himself in in the next ten days. There are no pardons available on this trial — federal or state. The governor of Georgia cannot pardon people for something like five years. Fani Willis RICO’d his ass, too, so it is a “serious felony,” with mandatory jail time. Trump is in a lot of trouble. Lol.
The only thing is that the Republican legislature passed a law where they could set up a goon squad committee and fire any prosecutor in the state for any reason starting in 8 weeks or so, so it seems quite possible they will try and fire Fani Willis. I don’t have a firm grasp on what happens if they fire her — does her second-in-command take over? Unclear. I’m sure there have been a million think pieces written about this while I was asleep, though, so, hey, maybe you already know.
Good times, good times. The next year is going to be absolutely bonkers and I don’t know if I can handle it. Also I had a revelation last night that I am not going to obsess over Senate polls every single day for a year because the Senate is fucked and we are probably going to lose it and my god that is going to be so utterly depressing that I just don’t know what to do with myself, as Jack White said.
While we’re bitching let’s bitch about some other stuff: Bananas. I mean, there was that one Korean grocery chain that pulled that marketing stunt and packaged up bananas in seven different levels of ripeness so that you could have a ripe banana every day. And everyone passed around the image and the article and said “yes! I want this!”… and then nothing happened and we still don’t get bananas of various ripeness and the whole thing is a shitshow. Do you know how long a banana lasts when picked from a tree in Hawaii or Central America or whatever? It’s something like 30, 40 days. You probably don’t know this because all of the internet says 7-14 days because they are just talking about how long you will get as a consumer and/or they are talking about garden bananas (something I am *so* going to try once this greenhouse is built). But seriously, modern industrial banana last ages. And all that time is taken up by the logistics chain and we don’t get any of it and our bananas get too freakin ripe before the end of the week, and then you have your daughter sitting there telling you that this banana is icky. The whole thing is a mess and bananas are a nightmare and bananas overthrew governments and they can’t even last a week in your kitchen and I want that stupid seven-day banana pack (minus the plastic and styrofoam) so bad I can’t even tell you.
Semi-related we forgot to take the trash out last night and I just took it out and I wasn’t 100% sure if the trash man had come yet so I had to peek into my neighbor’s trash and I so should not have done that because the whole thing was full of plastic, cardboard and aluminum cans, into the trash, and I am so depressed and she drives a Prius and I just don’t know what to do with myself as Jack White says and you should never meet your heroes, as Metric says, and man what a bummer.
I finally got all my Tweets deleted. I was going to make a link there to my Twitter page to see my handiwork but a) screw Elon Musk and b) they make you log in to see anything now, so what’s the point of pointing you to page where you have to log in to see… nothing. I started it back in January when I had covid, I would sit in quarantine and watch the Chinese production of Three Body Problem (still recommended) and delete Tweets. And then I forgot about it for, like, seven months, but I finished it a few weeks ago. I am proud and sad but mostly proud and oh well what a giant bummer Elon is, fun crusher extraordinaire, lunatic stalker and boundryless bundle of broken id.
I think he’s finally done telling me I only have 3 days, 7 days, 1 day to sign up for Starlink or my order will be cancelled and I will automatically get a refund of my deposit. He hasn’t bugged me in five days now, but, then, I have not gotten my automatic refund either, so who the hell knows.
The Supreme Court decided that the giant settlement with the Sacklers is null and void and they have to go back to the drawing board. There is a ton of legal baggage to this, in that the Covid-bash-I-like-beer brigade is upending the use of a very popular approach to mass-scale class-action suits being settled in bankruptcy court by a competent and quick-acting judge. I have mixed feelings about this, as I do think there’s a lot to be said for the practice, but also it… does feel like cheating? But it’s hard to say that, for example, Johnson-and-johnson’s contact lens business ought to be put out of business because of their baby powder? There’s a fundamental mystery at the core of the American civil litigation system, which is “what happens when people are sued, and found liable for, damages well in excess of the amount of money they have?” It’s not really written down anywhere, since the cases can be in federal court, state court, different districts, etc. But nowhere did, like, the constitution or congress say “hey you know what? When this happens we ought to bundle ‘em all up and let a bankruptcy court handle it and also we should let them not go out of business if they have other lines of business.” We just… started doing it. So as much as it pains me it is probably right to sort that out. But also… it’s kind of working fine? Don’t mess with what’s not broken.
But I have no qualms about those Sacklers getting dragged through the mud a little longer and (presumably) losing a few more bill, since in their case, while they were, like, 50 Cent rich before inventing Oxycontin, they weren’t billionaires, and none of the other things they ever did were gonna make them billionaires. So… they should not be billionaires anymore. Seems simple.
While I’m bitching I’m just gonna bitch some more about Chat GPT and Midjourney. God I can’t stand it. I can’t stand media outlets I respect (ahem Boing Boing) using Midjourney to make weird political cartoons of Trump going to jail or looking like a professional wrestler or something. It feels as bad as finding out that neighbor doesn’t recycle. Like… just hire a fucking illustrator or don’t do it, okay. I can’t stand Midjourney’s visual style, I’m tired of it and it is some one-note. Jane’s into the band Garbage so we watch a lot of Garbage videos and they’re great and Shirley Manson’s a babe and Butch Big really loves a goatee but that’s not the point the point is they all have that very specific 90’s indie style: film grain effects mucking up the picture, highly-saturated colors that sort of glow, and a blur on the edge and you see it and you just think “90’s” and that is what’s going on with Midjourney now it’s moment has passed that style needs to fade into the past but Midjourney is not letting it we are going to be trapped with that aesthetic of fuzziness until they get better at their tech, it is not succeeding but it sure is trying to kill artistic progress. Same with Chat GPT. I do not agree with Nick Cave’s assessment that art must be borne of suffering, but I do very much agree that “ChatGPT is fast-tracking the commodification of the human spirit by mechanising the imagination. It renders our participation in the act of creation as valueless and unnecessary.”
I can’t stand any of it, I want it out of my life, I want it banned from my life. And it would be nice if we could ban it completely but I recognize that that probably requires a constitutional amendment or convention (lol yeah right), but I sure as fuck wish they would make an opt-out mechanism. It’s insane they are allowed to foist this shit on all of us against our will. It should have a nice warning on it like a pack of cigarettes and you should be able to function as a human in society without being exposed to this poison the same way we are protected from pollution and secondhand smoke — ha, well, we are in theory, or used to be before Republicans broke the world but you know what I mean. An EPA for AI. An AIPA.
Begone, you boring-ass parlor trick masquerading as profundity. Leave me be.
That was a good line. C’mon. “Mid” is right in the name. Moving on.
I’m scanning my topic list and had a thought I would get through all my complaining in one issue here, but boy, there sure are a lot of other things I want to complain about but I think that is enough for today.
Jane stayed up too late in her bed Sunday night and as a result she was tired and cranky last night, didn’t want to brush her teeth, didn’t want to put on her pajamas, didn’t want to dance. We turned it around in the end but it was so much work and so exhausting and really took a lot out of me. Also I am thinking maybe my arm is fucked because our dance swings and I probably have to stop that soon but I don’t want to, it is fun, we both like it, and we haven’t had a chance yet to show it off at a wedding. Boo.
The school emailed again, and called, and emailed Emma, etc., to say “oh sorry we got the dates wrong on that last email and call here are the correct ones.” Covid is everywhere. This is such a bummer school is such a bummer. I will be excited for the extra free time but man. At what cost, at what cost.
I wonder if GMHHAY will get better if I have more than 10 seconds of being awake before writing it though.
We will find out!
Okay this mix rules, it just absolutely rules. Best one I made in ages. Starts off with “A New Decade,” which I have been thinking about a lot recently. Saw Verve on the A Northern Soul tour at the Paradise in Boston and they opened with this and I almost started bawling then and there and still thin of it all the time. New Olivia Rodrigo absolutely rules so very excited for this album. More Neubauten, of course — I am done! I am free! Sweet-ass jam from Breathe that was the theme to my sophomore year in high school and rules. And then we have the Brigette Nielsen/Falco collab that Meghan alerted me to this weekend and we all watched the video of and it is just fantastic and Brigitte Nielsen had an amazing career and life and I don’t know why I put that in the past tense I thin she’s still alive. Oh and Creatures! They came on First Wave recently and I love them so much I think I love them more than Siouxsie is this heresy am I alone in this? And Iggy Pop’s best song, Candy, fight me. Candy rules, Kate Pierson rules and I love that song so much.
Okay have a good Tuesday I know I won’t. Someone should.